“Good. I’m good. What’s it like being back at school?”
Paige hesitated. “Difficult.” She stopped at that.
He wondered how hard it was for her to be there. But then her voice came brighter, more positive.
“Somehow it seems everyone’s an idiot. Maybe you were right—they seem so much younger than I am. Even though, in actual fact, at law school, they’re really not. But I’ll survive. It just takes a bit of getting used to, you know? I’m used to coming back from class to Steven, and he ‘ain’t’ here. It’s not good. It’s difficult.”
“Paige, you’ll be okay. I know you will.”
“Gee, thanks, pal.” She put on a cheerleader voice. “Gee whiz! If you say so!”
“Okay—look, I know you don’t think much of me, don’t value my opinion and all. But I know you’ll be fine. For what it’s worth.” Suddenly, he wondered why he’d bothered…but then he knew. He wanted her, he missed her. Carrie was a constant reminder of her, and he wished Paige was here, too.
There was a deep breath let out into the mouthpiece of the phone. “I value your opinion, Jake. I just don’t listen to it. Well,” she added, “I don’t listen to anyone but my gut. I know I’ll be all right. I’ll graduate top of my class as I was meant to do—my new class that is—and I’ll kick butt left, right and center. What about you?”
He considered his answer carefully, now the threat of Ty seemed to have passed. “I’ll be happy working on the ranch with my dad. That’s the way it is out here—that’s the way it’s always been. And I’m happy with that. I don’t see a need for a piece of paper saying I studied what I learned by living here on this ranch all my life. You see the need for that?”
“No, Jake, I don’t. You go on and lead the life you want, the life your family knows. It’s a good life, I’m sure. And call me again from time to time. I like knowing about my mother’s love-making. Really.”
****
In the dim bedside light, Carrie lay with her head nesting on Ray’s chest, her hand absently playing with the curlicues of hair on his stomach and moving up the dent from his navel. The quiet was almost intimidating, frightening in a way, after life in New York, absent of car horns or ambulances, fire engines or police car sirens heralding accident and emergency in the night.
Her mind wandered from her current book to Ray to the screenplay she’d been re-working to Paige. She worried about her daughter, and then decided she mustn’t worry about her, and then fretted some more. In the back of her mind, somewhere deep inside, was that moment when she had seen the pills by her daughter’s bedside. But then, Paige had said…what had she said? She wasn’t the suicidal type. What type, exactly, was that? Still, it was best to check on her regularly, let her know that just because she was with Ray, she hadn’t stopped thinking about her. But now it was far too late to phone; even Paige would be asleep with the time difference.
Carrie shifted slightly, and Ray’s voice came in its low notes of semi-conscious rasp, “A penny for them?”
“Lots of thoughts,” said Carrie sitting up. “Paige, work…”
His hand gently played down her back before she moved off the bed and grabbed a nightdress, letting it slide down her body like a curtain coming down before her head stretched out of it and her arms found their way.
Ray was watching. “You know, I think that’s the first time you’ve actually got out of bed and dressed right in front of me.”
“Is it?” She tilted her head considering this, a small uncertainty rattling her, before she headed for the bathroom. “I must be getting used to you,” she called over her shoulder.
“You still frettin’ over your body?” His words met her closing the bathroom door.
For a moment, she stayed silent while she washed and got ready for sleep. Then she stepped out. “I shall always fret over my body. You’ll be disgusted by it soon. You’ll see. Who wants to make love to a withered old hag?”
Ray inhaled, obviously frustrated with having to deal with this again. “You know,” he drawled out, “there’s two of us aging here. You don’t hear me worrying ’bout my old broken down body appearing in front of you with all its flabby bits. I’m not in love with your body, Carrie. I’m in love with you, you dang fool.” He reached out a hand and drew her over. “Find something else to worry about, will you?”
He was right; she knew she didn’t give a damn what the hell he looked like. To her, he was the best looking damn man on earth. Worry about something else? “I have,” she finally answered him. “I should have phoned Paige again today. She sounded too crisp and business-like to me on the phone yesterday.” It was going to be a long night. Her mind was turning over too much.
Ray stole a glance at the bedside clock. “She’ll be fine,” he assured her. “First thing tomorrow, you can call, but I’m sure she’ll be fine.” He lay back on the pillow. “Anyway, I didn’t know Paige had anything but ‘crisp and business-like’ when speaking. Seems that’s the way a lawyer should be…even with her mother,” he added quickly. He patted the bed beside him.
Carrie curled herself in again as Ray switched off the low bedside light.
“You think again about how long you can stay? Not that I want you to go—I want to make that clear.”
“Oh.” She gave a quiet giggle. “I guess maybe as long as Mabel lets me.” Lying against him, the quake of his laughter quivered against her skin. “Seriously, I don’t know. It sort of depends on various things, the book, the screenplay, lots.”
“You miss New York? Your friends?”
“Yes. But then, if I were there, I’d be missing you, so which is worse?” She craned her neck to meet his gaze. A sudden feeling of contentment washed over her, and she curled up again, resting her head against him.
For a while, she listened to the broken record song of the cicadas and frogs until that was joined by the soft whistle of Ray’s even breathing. But such satisfaction did not send her to sleep; it was a night when her mind would not rest and the restlessness won.
Carrie slipped one leg down and then the other to stand and quietly make her way out the door, drawing it shut behind her. The hallway was pitch black, a night in which clouds blanketed the moon, and, like a criminal, she stole her way to the sunroom. Feeling for the switch, she inundated the room in the white light of the ceiling fan bulb and flipped the computer open, jabbing in her password and sitting, waiting for the home page to appear.
And then the dogs started barking.
Slipping back from the table, she rose to see if she could spot a deer that might have set them off as Jake had mentioned. The void of blackness was menacing, a complete emptiness of life as if she were the last person left on the planet. The glare of the light bulb and her own reflection forced her to lean right up to the cold glass, but nothing greeted her, a vacancy was all there was.
She decided it was nothing more making them bark than a passing animal she couldn’t see, and she started to sit down when she became aware of something. Dogs were still barking, but it sounded like there were only two of them barking now, which puzzled her. They were barking more frantically, too, with a sort of whining cry emitted, a terrible yowling of desperation.
And then came the screech of the kennel door.
Hurriedly rising from her chair again, her heart pounding as if it wanted to escape her chest, Carrie rushed to the glass of the sunroom windows, desperately searching the emptiness for a sign of movement. The room’s reflections in the glass sketched specters outside, unnerving doppelgangers in an alternate world. Her hand instinctively went to her chest as she searched the void franticly.
And then, two staring, disembodied eyes came floating through this ghostly setting and, catching the light from the room for a second, a knife held out, red stains of blood just dulling its sheen.
Chapter Eleven
The bitter taste of bile still roiled around Jake’s mouth as he listened to the two dogs whining and whimpering from the kitchen where he had shut them in, their
plaintive cries a testimony to his predicament. He had not as yet been able to deal with the slaughtered Alamo, and he expected his father might do the deed, unpleasant as it was going to be. But his dad was now crouching in front of a shivering and shaking Carrie while the sheriff surveyed the scene, the rotating blue lights of his patrol car reaching through the windows and giving the hall and front room the aura of a deserted fairground.
“Ray, I think you might wanna call Doc Gibbons for Miz Bennett,” Dex said between chews of gum. “A little—”
“No!” snapped Carrie. She wrapped the blanket that had been thrown around her tighter to her trembling body. Her gaze fixed on the two rifles, now propped against the wall, that Jake and his father had got out when she screamed. “I don’t need a doctor. I don’t want a sedative. I’ll be fine.”
“Sweetheart, you’ve had a bit of a shock. For all we know, you may well be in shock, medical shock. I really think—”
His father suddenly appeared incredibly old, drained, and no doubt in need of a drink.
“I’ll be fine. Really.” She patted his bent knee in a gesture of reassurance.
“Maybe you should give her a brandy, Dad.” He spoke quietly from his place on the side.
“It’s sugary, weak tea for shock as I recall, and I don’t want you fussing anymore.”
Carrie’s gaze sought his father, and Jake had a sense of foreboding as to the turmoil his dad was facing.
“Well, I need a drink.” His father stood and glanced around. “I don’t know about you all, but I sure as hell need one.”
He moved to go, but Carrie reached out and caught his hand.
“Ray, don’t. Please don’t.”
She was probably struggling not to whine, not to make a scene, to not start an argument with his dad here in front of the sheriff.
His father patted her hand as it clung to his before he released himself. “I’ll be fine. We all need a drink, Carrie. You, too.”
“Well, I’m on duty,” put in Dex in a voice a little too upbeat. “Y’all go ahead and have one. I’ll start writing this all down if you don’t mind my sitting next to you, Miz Bennett?”
“No. Go ahead.”
“Tell me again what you saw, what happened?”
Carrie breathed out a begrudging sigh. “I came in here to work as I couldn’t sleep—”
“You make a habit of that, ma’am?”
“I don’t make a habit of it, no. It happens, occasionally, when I need to.”
The mounting annoyance in her voice struck Jake hard, and he sought his father’s reaction. His dad stood in the doorway for a moment and handed him a glass of whiskey, then went back to the living room, no doubt for another one for himself. It was obvious to Jake his father would be downing one before re-appearing with a glass, he probably had already indulged, and he would not have just one or two. And Carrie could probably figure that out as well.
“Let me tell you again, Sheriff, one more time. I heard the kennel door screech. I knew the sound from previous occasions, so when I heard that, I got up and looked out to see what was happening. The automatic light wasn’t on—”
“He must’ve disconnected it,” Jake mumbled. He held his glass between two hands, fearing he might drop it, not having the strength to hold it in one.
Carrie went on. “All I could see were these two eyes coming toward me and the knife. Obviously, the man wore a balaclava or something, and was dressed in all black or I might have seen more. There is no moon tonight with this thick cloud cover—” Her hand went up, pointing into the vacant night. “—as you are no doubt aware. That is what I saw. That is all I saw.”
His dad came in with a whiskey for himself and handed her a brandy. Her eyes pleaded with him, but Jake knew the attempt was futile.
“And you heard this screech only. You didn’t hear anything else?” Dex’s gaze moved up from his pad and bore into Carrie with a dubious assessment.
“The dogs were barking,” she answered. “But I knew they barked at passing deer or other animals, so it didn’t alarm me until—”
“You didn’t think at that point to wake either Ray or Jake?”
“No, no of course not. I knew the dogs often barked, as I’ve just said. Ray would go berserk if I woke him every time a dog barked out there. For heaven’s sake!”
“Dex, is this absolutely necessary tonight, right now? We’ve all had a real trying time with this, and I think Carrie ought to get to bed now.” His father gulped a swallow of whiskey and stared pointedly at the sheriff.
“I’m sorry, Ray, real sorry for all this, but I find if I don’t get people to talk right after an event, they forget a load of details. I gotta get this down while it’s all fresh in Miz Bennett’s mind. Then, if she remembers something else later, she can come on in and see me tomorrow.”
“It’s all right, I’m fine,” Carrie told them both. She sipped at her brandy before continuing. “I was suddenly aware there were only two dogs barking, but barking more frantically, desperately—howling like the hounds of hell I’d say. I got up to look out, and that’s when I screamed. I screamed when I saw the eyes and the knife, and then the man disappeared. That’s all there is to say, really. That’s all that happened.”
“What makes you so sure it was a man?” Dex didn’t wait for an answer as he turned to question Jake and his father. “Either of you know anyone who would want to do a thing like this?”
Jake’s body swam with nausea for a moment, and he had trouble getting the whiskey back up to his mouth. His father’s shake of the head didn’t seem to satisfy Dex, either.
“Ray, I’m real sorry to ask you this, but what about Leigh Anne? You know divorces can be messy things. She bear you a grudge? You think she might do something like this?”
“No!” Jake’s tone was so vehement, the other three were overtaken with obvious surprise.
Silence resonated in the air like a hammer poised to come down.
“It wasn’t a woman, Sheriff,” Carrie asserted at last. “Not unless she was over six foot.” She took a swallow of the brandy, and shuddered before wrapping the blanket tighter around her shoulders.
“Well, how the heck do you know the person was over six foot, Miz Bennett? You said he was dressed all in black and all you could see were the eyes.”
“That’s just it,” she answered. “From the height of the eyes, I know it was a very tall person. I’m guessing over six feet at least.”
Dex tapped his pen on the pad with a shake of his head. “Well,” he said, hoisting his belly and moving back in the chair. “Could be a woman in heels. Did you hear a vehicle, a getaway car?”
Jake exchanged inquiring looks with the other two.
It was his dad who said, “Carrie was pretty damn hysterical, screaming her head off. I think we might have missed hearing that, what with the dogs yapping an’ all. Sure to be tire tracks out front if your patrol car hasn’t mussed them.”
“Well.” Dex sighed again as he lugged his heft to standing position. “I doubt I’ll be able to see anything tonight, but I’ll have a look with a flashlight. Any arguments with your clients, Ray? Any disagreements over a bill perhaps, dissatisfaction with a hunt, somethin’ like that? Anything at all you can think of?”
His father shot back his whiskey, and shook his head. “Nothing. Nothing like that at all. Most of my clients are either regulars, recommended by regulars, or come here through their firms who have contracts with me. If they were dissatisfied, I’d hear from the firms, but there’s been nothing like that, nothin’ at all.” He banged his glass on the table.
Carrie swayed slightly and his dad gathered her to him as he stooped beside her.
“Really, Dex, I think I better see Carrie to bed. I think this is all just too much for one night now, and we’ll all feel better in the mornin’.” He grasped her by the shoulders. “I hope.”
I won’t feel better. Jake leaned back against the wall and swigged his whiskey. I won’t feel better at all.
****
The odor of Lysol wafted in on a late morning breeze as Carrie sat in front of her blank page on the computer, wondering if she would ever be able to write another word. The page beckoned her accusingly, as if she had made it a promise she didn’t keep.
She glanced outside to watch Ray carrying a shrouded Alamo to the grave Jake had dug some distance from the yard. He carefully lowered the canine in before grabbing a second shovel to help put back the top layer of earth. Crockett and Star lay at Carrie’s feet, a feeling of desolation so great emanating from the two remaining dogs that, whenever she considered their loss, an upsurge of tears would begin and the dogs would whimper and beat their tails like old women keening and pounding their chests in mourning.
Beyond the glass, she saw Ray dust down his hands and give the earth one last tamping with his boots before heading to a shed to put the shovels away. Jake was filling a bucket from the outside tap, the Lysol bottle nearby, no doubt to wash down the kennel floor for what, to Carrie, was about the millionth time.
No one had had more than coffee for breakfast, and a very subdued Mabel made an unusually quiet circuit of the house.
Carrie reviewed her earlier telephone conversation with Paige, to cry on her shoulder, as her daughter had put it. She’d obviously been the wrong one to seek for sympathy; all business as usual, her daughter had pointed out the loss of a dog was ‘hardly, well, you know, he may be man’s best friend, but he wasn’t a human.’ And so, now the funereal air was so ubiquitous, Carrie had a sudden urge to just get out, when the two men entered.
“Had to be someone who knows the place, knows the lay-out,” Ray was saying. “I don’t understand it at all. He’d been into the shed and tampered with the breaker for the outside lights. Who would do such a thing, Jake? Why would they do such a thing?”
Carrie sensed the younger man was staring at her, trying to read her.
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